IL1B and noise induced hearing loss: As the pathogenesis of NIHL correlates with inflammation46–48 and, as previous reports suggested, inflammation also contributes to AHL49,50, we additionally investigated the expression of the proinflammatory cytokine genes Il1b, Il6, and Tnfa. However, the expression of these proinflammatory cytokine genes was not significantly different among the three groups (Fig. 3b).